Treacle Toes
Time
Sssh steth your numbers don't add up...conspiraloon that you are.
....and you Sam...Alex has spoken...tough decisions? All hail the twit.
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Grenfell Tower fire in North Kensington - news and discussion
- Thread starter JTG
- Start date
....and you Sam...Alex has spoken...tough decisions? All hail the twit.Have been reluctant to post on this thread but the absolute crap being written about 'tough decisions' as though integrity is involved anywhere in these cost equations has spurred me to mention a little tale of council values. It is Feb/March - still unspent money in the pot which must be disposed of before the end of the year...what to do? Hey, lets install scaffolding, front and back on 3 storey 'townhouses' and 5 storey 'maisonettes'...to paint 2 x 9inch strips of concrete along the front and back of buildings (directly over filth, bird shit, leaves - not even a basic sweeping away of rubbish was done before a slick of white gloop was smeared (badly) on these unstructural strips...regardless of the fact that the entire estate has thermal expansion in ALL the windows. A whole order was made. somehow getting all the measurements wrong, leading to 564 dwellings being fitted with windows which are too small. 2 years ago, our roof slates - all in excellent order, were replaced with cheap Spanish slate, dodgy private contractors...and all of us now have ongoing leakage and electrical issues as our roofs have lost integrity. We have no say in any of this and can see, with our own eyes, that work is done by some arcane system known only to the local council...but absolutely not based on need or even practical investment.
Don't talk about 'tough decisions' as though a bunch of bureaucrats are agonising over best practice, value for customers, environmental issues...we had a 3 year battle to retain a 24hour caretaker post (vital, given the number of elderly and vulnerable people on my estate)...so much that we were prepared to fund it ourselves.
They're in the post above the one you replied too, in fact they are in the post you misquoted 8bn from.
Incidentally if all you've got is insults it means you've got nothing.
Alex
Cid
Proper break this time
And it also spread inside the building. And it was started by an exploding fridge, we don't yet know why that exploded. There are a number of issues that need to be investigated...
Buckaroo
Donkey piss and tractors
You didn't post any facts, just 'apparently' and 'varying costs' shit. If you're going to claim you've posted facts, then post some fucking facts.
eta If I've all I've got is insults it means you are nothing.
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scifisam
feck! arse! girls! drink!
It's 800million, but he wrote it as .8billion to make it seem like more.
4000 blocks - 'Disaster waiting to happen': fire expert slams UK tower blocks
Cost of sprinklers
Reality Check: Why don't all high-rises have sprinklers? - BBC News
Now off you go to back up your statement.
Alex
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
"The cost can be high because in blocks made of concrete and steel like Grenfell, the process is difficult and time-consuming. So the focus has been on other measures which would contain a fire to stop it spreading.
However, Roy Wilsher, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council, said it is "certainly something we need to look at again" "
"In 2015, a spokesman for the Chief Fire Officers Association said that nobody had ever died in a fire in the UK in a property with a "properly installed sprinkler system working the way it's meant to"."
And just remember point-8-billion is just under a third of what it cost to spruce up parliament as quoted upthread.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
All the tower blocks in the country could have been made safe for what was pissed away on the millennium dome
equationgirl
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
DId you read the BBC article? It makes it very clear that most blocks don't have sprinklers because there is nothing mandating their retrofit to existing unrefurbished blocks. Only mandatory in new builds and refurbishment in various circumstances around the UK.
Also cost of £1m for three blocks is of similar size to estimates for a system for Grenfell.
editor
hiraethified
At least that gave people some pleasure. I'd say it's better to compare it with the millions, nay billions, that are lost by tax dodging corporates.
Corax
Luke 5:16
It costs £6m p/a to subsidise the prices at the Houses of Parliament bars and restaurants.
So frankly, you can take this 'hard decisions' schtick about having to cut nurses or fuel payments and stick it right up your fucking arse.
Cid
Proper break this time
To be fair that specific quote is kind of meaningless... I mean how many buildings with a properly installed sprinkler system are there? How many are residential? How many have had fires?
Not that I'm disagreeing on the broad point. But I mentioned upthread that if a body spending money can tick a box by installing something, they will neglect other areas... This needs thorough research and, I suspect, a combination of compulsory compartmentalisation, sprinkler systems and updated regs. And liability for management companies in maintaining the former two.
mauvais
on reddit or something
Shirley Towers was basically in our back garden. There were a bunch of recommendations from the inquest, not least one relating to the support of electrical cables, which melted causing the cables to fall down, and may have contributed to the firefighters' deaths. This was the second such incident of its kind.
In 2013 the government rejected a change to the standards to avoid this problem. In 2015, five years after the incident, it was finally adopted through consistent lobbying by a charity and the fire service. The government response to this stuff can easily be shown to be systemically and repeatedly inadequate.
Edit: additionally a factor in both Shirley Towers (I read the report) and Grenfell (I saw it in a firefighter account) was that firefighters found it difficult to identify what floor they were on at any one time. Again a Southampton coroner recommendation to clearly sign floors was rejected.
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From above .."In the council housing sector, these changes came together in a drive towards removing housing from local government ownership and control. Council housing was handed over to newly created quasi-private bodies, such as arms-length management organisations and tenant management organisations, or transferred en masse to housing associations".
So is this the case with Grenfell Towers? Did Kensington and Chelsea Council still have ownership and or any control over Grenfell? or was all control, responsibility relinquished allowing KCTMO to exonertate the Council from all and any legal responsibility? Does anybody know..
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Another alternative might have been to spend a little more money on materials that were fit for the job. And, of course, a little money on inspection and QA to make sure they were installed appropriately, too.
Buckaroo
Donkey piss and tractors
Back up what statement?
Treacle Toes
Time
We don't, we can have both things. The problem is with the thinking that we can't have both. Like some of those things are more important than others. That there is a need to choose. There isn't. That they hold more value in the minds of some is a large part of the problem.
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
Apart from Parliament though, where we should only retain the facade for tourist photos.
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existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Isn't it astonishing that people could have come up with the term "arm's length management organisation" and, apparently, use it with an entirely straight face, without ever once stopping to think what the subtext of such a phrase was...?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Oh, I think those little Norman arches in the façade would make perfect anchoring points for a series of nooses...it doesn't just have to be purely about appearance
Cid
Proper break this time
Pugin's interiors are pretty damn good. Mothball most of it, rest as a museum.
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
Manter
Lunch Mob
What, volunteer?
Very true but that doesnt really answer my question, just how much if any legal responsibility did the LA have? Do ALMOs assume all responsibility if so why did tenants complain to the Council? trying to understand how the relationship between council, ALMO and tenant works.
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brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
No, that's not a job, is it?
Manter
Lunch Mob
I'm really fucking baffled by this one. They were never missing- the Syria solidarity campaign knew where they were the whole time. Their lawyers knew, their caseworker knew. They were at an event I was at on Saturday.
So how monumentally fucked is the process that they were 'missing'?
It's just rank incompetence.
Manter
Lunch Mob
There is no job title for him in the article. It says he is 56 and spent a week volunteering
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